The Surge in Absurdity
There is nothing easier than making predictions about the behavior of the Bush administration. Look for the eventuality in every scenario that completely lacks logic and it will be the course pursued by this president. Only the zealot can process what he says but the damage done by his blunt force instruments is impossible to ignore. So let us all now prepare for the report of Gen. David Petraeus.
Is there anyone in America who doesn't already know what Petraeus and the president are going to tell the public? Here's a guess from someone who lives a good chunk of continent away from the Beltway: Progress is finally being made; it's not as much as we want but it would be wrong for America to abandon the Iraqi people now just as things are starting to improve.
The president and Hillary and General Petraeus can all talk about the al Anbar Province but that doesn't change what is happening in the rest of Iraq. It does, however, gloss over a few important points about Anbar. Bush does not expect the American public to question why the Sunnis in Anbar are cooperating with US forces. But there are some obvious conclusions to be reached about the state of the war in Anbar.
The White House and the Pentagon have made much of the alliances between Sunni leaders and American forces. They have combined in an effort to push back al Qaeda insurgents in al Anbar. That may be only part of their motivation, however. It's just as likely that the Sunnis, who dominate Anbar Province, are seeking to keep the majority Shiites at a distance. Isn't it possible that American soldiers are being used to facilitate the initial steps of Iraq's Balkanization while they fight to keep the city of Ramadi and the wider province of al Anbar free from al Qaeda's control?
Saddam Hussein, of course, was a Sunni, and when he was deposed by the US invasion and occupation, his sect was essentially disenfranchised. The decades of oppression the dictator had visited upon the Shiites to the south and the Kurds to the north have made political reconciliation between the sects virtually impossible, regardless of how many purple fingers are waved in the air. Obviously, the Sunnis know that at least some of the majority Shiite population wants revenge and atonement for the torture and loss under Saddam. Many Shiites believe the Sunni are accountable, if only by religious association with the crazed dictator. The insurgents being fought by the US and Sunni alliance in Anbar undoubtedly include Shiite fighters among the insurgency. There seems to be ample evidence that the Sunnis are interested in securing Anbar Province, the city of Ramadi, and Central Iraq as their own territory. This can hardly be described as a military victory for the US.
Whether the US leaves Iraq tomorrow or ten years from tomorrow, the only variable in the outcome will be the number of dead Americans and Iraqis. It seems inevitable that the country will be governed in three distinct regions with political power emanating, as it almost always has, from the mosque and the politically connected clerics. The Sunni will control the central reaches of Iraq while the Shiites will rule the south with considerable involvement from Iran. To the north, the Kurds will try to maintain a semblance of order while avoiding Turkish influence. Yes, it's possible they will war against each other but isn't that already happening?
What's happening in Al Anbar does not present a very cogent argument that we are making progress. But it is a sign the Sunni have staked out a claim on their piece of the countryside and we are helping them to secure it. This hardly seems worth another American life. But the president who avoided Vietnam is now citing that war as an example of why we should not leave Iraq and his rhetoric is as much a proof of his evasiveness as are his missing Texas National Guard records. Mr. Bush talks about the Vietnamese "boat people" as evidence America ought not to have left South Vietnam. Has he not noticed the millions of Iraqis fleeing to Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, and Syria? Ultimately, the argument can be made that America's refusal to withdraw from Vietnam is what helped secure the population's determination to adopt a communist style government. Our lingering presence in Iraq is almost certain to turn the Iraqis away from democracy and insure an Islamist regime. Occupiers never win because the occupied will always outfight them and out-die them and outlast them.
Democracy only succeeds when it spreads itself. If the Iraqis truly wanted what we are trying to force feed them, they would have tried to get it themselves, the same way our founders did. Instead, they are fighting amongst religious sects, goaded on by al Qaeda insurgents who hope to take advantage of the chaos, and our president has sent our children into the middle of this madness. This is not our fight. And every Republican or Democrat who thinks the Iraqi conflict is important to America needs to offer up at least one son or daughter to carry a gun into the desert. If they can't make that commitment, then they are hypocrites and cowards.
Otherwise, bring them all home. And do it now.
Follow James Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/moorethink
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Do you suppose that the surge was a result of Cheney’s visit to the Saudi royalty last winter? Can you imagine that a deal was cut to let us get out of Iraq if the Sunni were secured in Al Anbar and had a base of operations to take back Iraq from the dreaded and godless Shiites?
The Saudis are the effective fourth branch of our current government, supplanting the press. They have consistently protected our economy form oil shocks since Sr. Bush made nice with them in the 1980s, following the pricing reprisals for the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Oil was relatively stable up until the Iraq elections of 2005. Then we saw prices spike and the Saudis did not supplement production to cover the demand gap. In perspective, Saddam set all the oil fields in Iraq on fire during the first gulf war and oil prices barely budged because the Saudis picked up the slack.
So were the Saudis sending us an oily message that they did not like the outcome of the elections in Iraq? Did they, in their tiny theology ridden brains, see that an Iraq free from the threat of Saddam was no less a threat if it were a Shiite nation? Could Iran finally settle the 1,000 year old dispute of the line of Mohammed by overrunning the Sunni shrines with their armies?
Now it has all gone bad. The American public is fed up. The Iraqis can’t form a government to the liking of the Saudis and the congress is insisting on diplomacy with Iran. So we sell a trillion dollars worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia to defend the Iraq Sunni on their own. Sorry, best we can do because we seem to have been, well, over confident. Hopefully gas prices will go down and we can bring the troops home.
Oh, come now, child ... ;-) ... you but lack imagination.
Soon, the Saudis also will be Ours. They will see what our "bunker buster" (nuclear) weapons can do when properly applied.
All we need now are ... troops. Lots and lots and lots of troops.
"Greeting.
So you think the USA will use Nuclear weapons in a first strike?
"Occupiers never win because the occupied will always outfight them and out-die them and outlast them."
Finally, someone said it! It should be posted everywhere, repeated over and over. The whole argument of the warmongers rest solely on usage of one word: "war." The people can be convinced that wars can somehow be "won," but there is no way they would buy the same argument for an "occupatio
The solution is indeed quite simple. Ban the word 'war' in any reference this occupation and the entire argument becomes obvious: Occupiers never win! Stop fooling yourself: "War" no more!
N.B.: This was a most excellent blog, Mr. Moore. Thank you.
The one line in the movie Red Dawn that made sense was spoken when they wanted to kill the traitor, Charlie Sheen said to Patrick Swayze, "If we kill our own people what is the difference between them and us."
Swayze replies, "We live here, that is the difference
That si the difference between the US and Mercenaries and the Al Sadr militia, they live there, they aren't going anywhere. We might get Al Qaeda to go home to Saudu Arabia, but 90 percent of the resistance is staying even if we kill them all.
Remember when we armed al Qaeda to assist in defeating the secular, anti-drug forces in Afghanistan that were backed by the Soviet Union? Remember Rambo and how we helped Mullah Omar and bin Laden in their epic battle against secularism in the Moslem world in general and Afghanistan in particular? Remember the arms we provided them were used against the Soviets and their secularist, non-poppy Afghan allies by bin Laden and Mullah Omar? And then those same arms were used against us. Now we're supplying insurgents who hate us with arms to fight al Qaeda. Once those insurgents win that battle, and they will, guess who those weapons will be turned against?
I was hoping your point would be made.
Further, the US has a poor record in interventions. Chile got Pinochet after the US assassinated Allende. Daniel Ortega is back as leader of Nicaragua. Reagan supported and armed the predecessors of al-Qaida (namely, as you say, one Osama bin Laden). Fortunately, Reagan showed his cowardice in Lebanon. I suspect the US would still be there, otherwise. Ronny's "big" testerone show was the island of Grenada. If that's not an elephant crushing an ant (pun intended), I don't know what would be.
The US really doesn't, by and large, have the wherewithal or sophistication to be involved in foreign policy. It usually behaves either ham-handedly or as a schoolyard bully. I would like to see a bit more isolationism. Then the US could better get its own house in order and stop screwing things up for most of the rest of the world.
"We're fighting them over there so ..."
Oh, puh-leeuze. As Madonna once put it, "that was last year's trick."
Too many ignor our record in those instances.
Amen!!!
It's all about oil and funds for contractors. Democracy starts at home.
All our politicians who think they get a say in what happens in Iraq should respect democracy. Therefore they should pack up, ship out, and see if they can get elected in Iraq. And let's not let them back because we know they couldn't give a hoot about a government that represents the people.
tao ..
Al Gore said of our objective in Iraq, “To get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn’t do further avoidable damage to the people who live there.”
It's plain the attempt to get Iraq to pass the Hydrocarbon Law is not happening and the Sharing Agreements will not happen. The Unity Gov. there is reaffirming an oil production agreement with China.
It's proving true that the Shia cannot be depended upon to share revenues with the Sunnis so that the civil war will rage on whether we are there or not but certainly a bloodbath if we are not there.
For these reasons, to carry out Mr. Gore’s approach, it will be necessary to tilt in favor of Sunni control of the oil revenues because they will have to share the money with the Shia and Kurds to get the oil out of the ground. This can be done by re-deploying our troops to the six oil pipeline terminals out of the country and patrolling by air along the borders to prevent oil exports by truck. Also the banking must be controlled to assure that the oil is not pirated away from Sunni control.
To offset this unstable condition, the Shia and Kurds must control the reconstruction, reparations and infrastructure rebuilding so that down the road, there really is a nation there with enough balance to suppress the insurgency and civil war.
The re-deployment must be coordinated with the UN so that American greed is ultimately removed from the equation. The object of the UN involvement is to get the US out; first from the interior of the country and then from the re-deployment.
If there is no attempt to restore the balance of the status quo ante, any withdrawal will be bloody and will prevent the United States from recovering its composure around the world for years to come.
Ahh, spoken like a true oil-man. That's what we've got to "patrol," isn't it? "Petrol."
"Infrastructure" equals "oil wells."
And we say "UN" to suggest that "we are the world."
When you are playing a game of cards with a crooked dealer, he or she is going to make you think that you understand the game when you do not. Any "sharing" that might take place between the "Thing Ones" and the "Thing Twos" concerns ONLY 15% of the oil that is underneath that country: the part that has been developed NOW. "Screw 'em... let 'em fight over THAT all they please..."
In about two hundred pages of lawyerly riffraff, this "hydro carbon law" that you have read so much about will hand-over all of the UN-DEVELOPED resource to American-backed corporations .. royalty free, tax free, forever. In United States Dollars.
The people who have put the United States into this mess, working from the bridge of the ship of state, do not concern themselves with trifles like "the United State's composure.
And if they have to lay claim to "any Person between age 18 and 42" to get it...
... they will.
... oh, yes. They will.
What's that you say? "Over your dead body?" Why, of course. Of course.
"To get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn’t do further avoidable damage to the people who live there.”
DO ANY REALIZE EVEN YET JUST WHAT THIS WILL ULTIMATELY COST ? let alone do any have any idea just HOW "reparition"to the people of Iraq WOULD be accomplished and who figures it really COULD be actually accomplish
..."Nobody forced 70% of Iraqis to walk to the polls under mortar fire and the threat of suicide bombers. Iraqis tried to shed the yoke of Saddam several times, only to be brutally put down by his Army. Anyone who has a passing interest in this conflict knows that...." First, we can only presume that 70% voted and no way to verify there NOR here for that matter and uh, what say you of the earlier years when the US backed, supported and supplied Saddam --one of those periods had those chemicalized deaths--It was at a time when Saddam was fighting Iran and the US was more than willing to side/support Saddam...U
Bozwellian'
thanks for a most edifying post. we haven't learned any lessons. the damage done by GOP in their misguided neocon fantasies about force feeding "democracy" in Iraq has brought us to failed policies and breathtaking waste and incompetence.
The death of our bravest is a monumental tragedy. The thousands of Iraqi dead is horrifying. The millions who have fled Iraq are now pitifully exiled. we have destabilized the part of the world GOP had no knowledge of, and has learned NOTHING.
Please write more posts that could help to educate the many readers and contributors who have opinionated and uneducated responses to the Iraq debate.
Democracy is not fairy dust we can sprinkle, and you seem to know this well.
You have a very mature understanding of the area'scomplexities and history. Write more.
So true. I hate it when pols tell you to look to the future, "sure mistakes have been made but we must move on." It is almost as if they are trying to distract us from the fact that history is always the best predictor of future events.
We are always talking about the failure of our schools, but look at the parents. Look at how easy they are to manipulate. Their rudimentary knowledge about even the simplest history lessons almost compels them to believe anything that is put before them unquestioningly.
When looking at our own "history" and mentioning the current crop of "parents" and noting how easily "manipulated" , well, OUR eductional system was set up to educate just enough to have a good supply of good "factory" workers (and not just in the manufacturing, but clerical/even management staff positons) ..LOL, things intermittently have gone haywire in some instances for some folks took education venues seriously/to heighten their awareness which begot many more capable of "critical" thinking ability...
This comment says it all:
"every Republican or Democrat who thinks the Iraqi conflict is important to America needs to offer up at least one son or daughter to carry a gun into the desert. If they can't make that commitment, then they are hypocrites and cowards."
Nothing else needs to be said.
Re: "...needs to offer up at least one son or daughter..
JOE BIDEN's son, Delaware's AG, is in a NationalGuard unit that has been notified to be ready to be called up...they don't know where to yet, but undoubtedly somewhere in the Middle East...and yes,he's going to go with his unit.
Also, BIDEN's the ONLY one of the candidates who voted to increase production of MRAPs, so that other sons and daughters who aren't lucky enough to be among the first to come home will be able to walk into their C-130 transport aircraft and not have to be carried in on a litter or in a body bag.
And, of course, BIDEN was the first and only candidate with a clear and practical plan for drawing down from Iraq that has the best chance of mitigating the harm to us AND to the Iraqis... Of course, the fact that he has been in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for over 30 years could have something to do with that...
In fact, it has prepared him in ways and with a depth that NO OTHER CANDIDATE HAS...PERI
Certainly not Obama, (despite Arianna's devotion to him and the fact that his book ad appears constantly on this site...VER
REALLY, WHAT OTHER CANDIDATE IS MORE QUALIFIED THAN JOE BIDEN...AN
Give Joe Biden Condi's job.
There is no other candidate as quailified as Biden but remember this country voted in an IDIOT TWICE. Clinton and Obama are being stuffed down the collective throats of a generation that will never be confused as the greatest. This generation is more concerned with getting a Plasma TV to watch the news than getting involved and making changes.
I saw an old war movie where some old guy said and I quote because it was such a great line I can't ever forget it "I regret that I have only one son to offer my country".
They are all gung-ho for war as long as someone else is doing the actual fighting and dying.
Except children are no longer the chattel of their parents. Children enter the military or not by their own decisions as private citizens.
There are many, many examples of hypocrisy by politicians, but a decision by their child is not one of them.
Here’s what might seem a bit confusing to those in Iraq upon whom we are trying to foist the ideology of democracy.
Supposedly, in a democracy, the majority is supposed to rule. In Iraq that would make the Shiih, over 60% of the population the ruling party, having been under the jack boot of the Sunnis who only comprise 30% for the past four decades. So we have delivered this wonderful new form of government, thrown a pail of water on the witch, let them celebrate her melting, and subsequently backed the Winkie guards who were her henchmen.
All apologies to Frank Baum.
So now we’re in cahoots with the minority party, something which must on some level confirm the Shiite suspicions that we were in bed with Saddam Hussein all along. Who the hell is running this war? Don’t they understand the mixed messages we’re sending. You can have your own government, but we are going to back the minority party if the government you vote for is friendly with Iran, or Islamic fundamentalists.
How much of the American template for democracy are we trying to push here? Or is it just like everything else in the Constitution, something for Mr. Bush to pick piecemeal, when it serves his purposes.
If I was Iraq, I would probably think we’re full of shit too.
Excellent post, grendl.
Another awful irony of all this is our government's quest to bring "democracy" to another country, when the fact is that they (our government) has totally f**ked it up here!
We've got people who ABUSE democracy trying to sell it as if they were such great arbiters of democracy themselves
THE INMATES REALLY ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM!...
Bush can't help it grendl, Republicans hate democracy. So why are they trying to establish one?
Great comment though. There is nothing as contra-effective as a mixed message.
I read your blog and bio and fail to see how you are anything close to an expert on Iraq, Arabs, or history. You come across as just another Bush-bashing appeaser. This comment takes the cake:
"Democracy only succeeds when it spreads itself. If the Iraqis truly wanted what we are trying to force feed them, they would have tried to get it themselves, the same way our founders did."
Nobody forced 70% of Iraqis to walk to the polls under mortar fire and the threat of suicide bombers. Iraqis tried to shed the yoke of Saddam several times, only to be brutally put down by his Army. Anyone who has a passing interest in this conflict knows that.
Your foray into historical analysis only proves that truly anyone can be a blogger and get published.
Nice ad hominem attack, avoiding addressing the issues raised by the article.
Perhaps because no-one can cogently argue against the substance of the article? You know he's right.
Curedlib correctly notes that Iraqis hoped elections would be their redemption. Many experts had predicted that a Shiite majority would result, just as many predicted a Hamas victory in Palestine.
What has made stolid, conservative types become true-believers in nation building and the erstwhile liberal notion that people want to get along and compromise to avoid painful dooms? Republicans used to want to keep us out of the kind of arrogant misadventures Bush's Iraq war has so clearly become. Now that we're in, just as with Vietnam, they want us to stay until they can blame our exit on "appeaseme
The fact that this blog states many obviously true facts and argues oft-repeated lines of reasoning proves that wishful thinking is now not a liberal state of mind, but the province of reactionaries.
Anyone with a passing interest in this conflict? This kind of dismissive phrase is as objectionable as those I presume is seen in Moore's blog. We should not have a passing interest in what Bush has done in Iraq. We should have a clear-eyed flunking interest in their sad acts of naive, foolish, and consistently flawed policy.
Alcamm
A great post. Write more. Have noticed a poor knowledge of Civics afflicting many of the readers. Your input could be very important
How can Bush spread something (democracy) in which he does not understand. Bush believes he is a decider , where one person tells everyone else what to do.
What is there that you do not understand between the difference???
"You come across as just another Bush-bashing appeaser."
I'm curious, Curedlib, just who it is you perceive Mr. Moore as "appeasing"?
As for those uber-Democratic elections, I'd think it apparent by now just how eager the Administration is to undo yet another experiment in transported Democracy gone awry.
When "the right guy for Iraq" says you "can leave whenever you like"(thanks for your sacrifice) and "Iraq can find other friends"(that's rich), it's a pretty good sign that your 'usefullness' is about used up.
Funny, but I can't make out a hint of purple on the blood-stained middle digits being presented to us now.
Saddam got 99% of the vote just before the US invasion and there was no mortar fire or suicide bombers then.
You want to stay in Iraq, then how much longer will it take? 5 more years? 10 more years? 20,50,100 or 1000 years? If you can't give me an estimate in years, then are we halfway there yet? A quarter? A tenth maybe?
The next question is where are we going to get people to fight? How are our grandchildren going to pay for this war? Will there be anyone left in Iraq when we get done? Will there be cemetaries and oil fields the only things left standing after we get done? Are you willing to resettle and repopulate Iraq? Because there won't be anyone left to pump oil for exxon into your hummer.
There are NO good "options" when it comes to the quagmire of Iraq and doubtful ANYONE has a really "good" solution to it all. NOT the current administration which is biding time and planning to pass the mess off on whoever gets in the WH next and then too, whatever is THEN decided upon, well the chaos that will BE will be due to NOT supporting the Bushler/Cheney "plan" and so will NOT be "their" fault and blah, blah, blah !!! Presently we here lamented that the Dems do NOT offer up much info as to how THEY might try to resolve...
Was the surge just a cover for the $plurge? It seems like draining the Treasury is as much if not more of a reason for "surging" since the surge wouldn't and hasn't worked, but the splurging has effectively transferred more billions per month to off-shore accounts, with no oversight.
Congress can stop the splurge which can reverse the surge by cutting funding for mercenaries which will leave plenty of funds already in the pipeline to bring the troops home.
It's good to hear democrat candidates praising the surge and declaring they will not rush out and risk collapsing the region.
Have they taken positions or are they just positioning themselves?
The middle east is not a coal mine. The region will not collapse if we leave.
I can remember the hysteria about the consequences
of ending the Vietnam war. One reporter asked Jerry Brown what he would do if the VC attacked California and he replied "We will fight them in the Rose Bowl"
That line was used in the Robert Redford movie
"The Candidate" because it was such a good answer.
http://www
The Candidate(1972)
"Was The Surge just a cover for The $plurge?"
Damn! If only there was a Democrat with the courage to use THAT as a campaign slogan!
You want to end this war?
Start by consistently and continually showing the American public the daily effects of it on the Iraqi population.
Without censure.
Show the blown-up bodies.
Show the dead and wounded children.
Show the grieving families of the dead and wounded.
Anyone who criticizes this as blatantly indecent, should question the decency of what America has forced upon the Iraqi civilians.
I recently went to the Dominican Republic on vacation and was shocked to see 2-3 minutes of news footage of up-close dead bodies from a car accident. This is routine there. It is done to try and make people drive better by showing them the consequences of bad driving.
If the American public was truly exposed to the realities of what their government and politicians subject the peoples of other nations to, they would not be so quick to send their sons and daughters off to war, and they would think twice about the decency of their own morals and "Christian values".
The American mass media is party to this illegal, cruel and unjust war. Shame, shame, shame on them.
_
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
